Saturday, April 16, 2016

1.Lincoln grew up in a one-room log cabin with his
father, mother and sister.

2.Abraham Lincoln had no middle name.

3.Honest Abe gave his father all of his wages
until he was 21.

4.He
often refused to partake in hunting and fishing as he didn’t like killing
animals

5.When he was 23, Lincoln bought a store, however
did so badly that he ended up owing money on it. He was so honest however that
he paid back every penny, even though it took him 17 years.

6.His journey took him to New Orleans where he
witnessed slavery for the first time in his life. He then walked home!

7.Lincoln was the first president to have a photo
taken at his inauguration.

8.Abraham Lincoln was the first president to sport
a beard whilst in office.

9.Lincoln was the first United States president
from the Republican party - but he was very unpopular in the South - he had won
only two of 996 counties in the Southern States.

10.Abe Lincoln is the only US President ever to
have obtained a patent - a boat-lifting device.

11.Lincoln is considered one of the three greatest
presidents of all time, alongside George Washington and Franklin D Roosevelt.

12.One of his speeches - The Gettysburg Address -
is the most quoted speech in American history.

13.President Lincoln made the speech at the Soldier’s
National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

14.At the time, prior to Lincoln’s speech there was
a two-hour oratory from Edward Everett which was initially known as the
Gettysburg address, however it is not very well known today.

15.The Gettysburg Address was delivered on the 19th November, 1863.

16.Lincoln’s speech starts with a reference to the
Declaration of Independence, written in 1776. The words Lincoln began with were
“Four score and seven years ago”.

17.This is the full speech.” Four score and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as
a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in
a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

18.It
is said that following the speech, there was no applause, only silence.

19.In the weeks leading up to his assassination,
Lincoln twice dreamed of his impending death.